BHTA head says tourism bosses not villains

By Marlon Madden

The Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association (BHTA) chairman is defending employers in the sector against “irresponsible attacks” and attempts to paint them as villains.

At the same time, Renee Coppin has urged operators to dot their i’s and cross their t’s while ensuring that workers are treated fairly and with respect.

“I have been the unfortunate witness recently to much discussion around tourism and what seems to me to be a dangerous trend that seems to villainise this industry and its players. Let me just say that we in the BHTA will continue to vigorously defend our industry against any irresponsible attacks,” she said at the BHTA’s third quarterly general meeting which was held at the Harrison’s Cave Eco-Adventure Park.

The head of the tourism industry umbrella body representative also urged members to make sure they were doing right by workers.

“There must be the highest level of compliance, not only to the letter of the law but to the call of our conscience. The moral responsibility to our people must remain at the centre of what we do and how we do it,” she said.

“This is a magnificent industry. One that is globally and locally providing opportunities for prosperity for Barbados and for Barbadians. However, we in the BTHA cannot defend the indefensible. And so we will never cease to hold you, our members, accountable to the most rigorous standards regarding the conduct of your businesses.”

The hotel boss has defended BHTA members against accusations by the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) regarding the $300 million Barbados Economic Sustainability and Transformation (BEST) programme that was established by Government to stimulate transformation in the tourism industry. In addition to investment, employers were required to tap into the programme to train and retool staff.

A few weeks ago, the BWU was very critical of hoteliers, accusing them of doing very little to facilitate training or follow through on other commitments made.

While Coppin at that time challenged the BWU to bring the evidence, she did not make reference to the union this time around; however, she declared her love for the industry and said she would continue to “robustly defend it against anyone who seeks with a constant streak of negative commentary to undermine its foundation”.

“I wish to highlight that during COVID, 58 tourism entities with a total of 2 600 team members participated in training offered through partnership between our companies and the National Training Initiative, which is more than the 2 481 that the BEST programme engaged,” the BHTA chairman said.

She also reported that team members were engaged in a variety of courses including languages, housekeeping, supervisory management and customer service.

Coppin said even after emerging from the lockdowns, the BHTA continued to facilitate courses for members.

Pointing to the importance of the industry to the island’s economy and development, she encouraged members of the association to continue to invest in training staff.

“We also need you, our members, to ensure that there is attention to basic requirements such as fully functioning health and safety committees at all eligible properties,” Coppin said.

“We wish to ask members to continue to pay attention to ensuring human resources best practices within our industry. We know that challenges will arise. We are not computers and we don’t deal with artificial intelligence. We deal with real people and real feelings. We must be constantly vigilant in our treatment to all of these considerations.”

Declaring that building trust was necessary, Coppin added that clear and consistent communication with team members and stakeholders would be critical in order to “debunk any disinformation – and there’s a lot of it that floats around about our industry”.

Coppin said the BHTA would continue to build partnerships with learning institutions and various national programmes to give opportunities to workers in the industry who required them.

“I ask that we stop demonising the practice of hard work. I have seen it done in the agricultural sector. The careless, out-of-context references to slavery have seen successive generations of young people reluctant to become involved at any level in that industry, even while we know that the world, and certainly Barbados, in this digital age needs farmers, service professionals and producers far more than it needs influencers. Let us ensure, therefore, that this narrative about slavery does not take hold within our industry,” she added.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb